Adventures in being a volunteer advocate to fight poverty while raising children. My insights are seen through the lens of motherhood and a desire to help moms uplift each other to make a better world for our kids.
By Cynthia Changyit Levin, @ccylevin

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Strategic Acts of Kindness

Last week
was “Random Acts of Kindness Week,” a time to encourage people to make life
more pleasant for everyone. Organizers at randomactsofkindness.org encouraged
actions like leaving positive notes around town and feeding meters for
strangers. I would never argue with that notion. The world needs more kindness!
But now that the week for random acts is over, I think it’s time to also
embrace “strategic acts of kindness.”

In the face
of such a disturbing reality, we must take powerful actions to protect those
who suffer disproportionately in this world because of religion, race, gender,
or any number of factors. People of every political stripe are waking up and wanting
to have a voice in the direction our country is heading. However, many regular
folks don’t have the first idea about how to reach our nation’s decision
makers.

That’s
where strategic acts of kindness come in. In my former career as an engineer, I
found random actions led to random results. Intentional strategy is needed to
combat random acts of hatred or – even worse – systematic acts of oppression in
our country and around the world.

Bread for the World volunteers handwrite letters to Congressat church after a Sunday worship service.

What could
this sort of organized love look like? Setting aside time each day to call
members of Congress to voice your opinion. Holding a meeting with friends to
write letters to elected officials. Submitting a letter to the editor. Sitting
down with a senator or representative face to face to voice your opinion with
respect. In fact, these are the very actions that U.S. representatives and
senators consistently report as the most influential ways a constituent can
sway their opinion.

If you
don’t know how to do these things right now, that’s not a problem. Before I learned
how to raise my voice, I was a stay-at-home mom who didn’t even know the names
of my senators. I only knew that my community and my world allowed babies in
poverty to suffer from poor health and I wanted to help. By getting involved
with reputable advocacy organizations like RESULTS, I was able to receive training, support, and inspiration to become a
skilled advocate. In time, I learned to effectively advise policy makers,
guiding them towards decisions that improve access to education, health, and
economic opportunity.

Richard Smiley and I meet with Senator Durbin aboutmicrofinance to help the poorest families of the world.

What could
we accomplish together if we could channel outrage and dissent into deliberate
actions to change the future in positive ways? The possibilities are endless. Look
at the massive problem of global poverty, widely regarded as unsolvable. Years
of coordinated volunteer advocacy have pressured the U.S. to partner with other
countries on global health, nutrition, and education programs. Since 1990, the
number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has been cut by more than half!
With enough engaged citizens creating the political will to stand up for ourselves
and people in need, there is no limit to the good we could do.

It is
critical that we empower ourselves with the skills needed to speak out to the
presidential administration and our members of Congress. Compassionate civic engagement is what our situation
demands of us today. Together, we can navigate the combative ugliness of our
time by rising above it. It’s time to move beyond the random. We can shape the
future by committing to strategic acts of kindness.

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